Spokane’s Most Atmospheric Crime Scene

Let’s chat about a Spokane icon that keeps sneaking into my books: the Monroe Street Bridge.

The Monroe Street Bridge has been rebuilt more than once, and its history is a little cinematic. The first span at this site (a wooden cable-railway bridge) opened in 1889 and burned the next year. A steel replacement followed in the 1890s, but by 1905 it was vibrating so badly a national roads consultant called it unsafe. Spokane answered with ambition: a monumental reinforced-concrete deck-arch with architectural flourishes. That third bridge opened in November of 1911 to a crowd of thousands. At the time, its 281-foot central arch made it the largest concrete arch span in the United States and among the largest in the world. The bridge’s bison-skull medallions, wagon-wheel motifs, and ornamental lighting declared Spokane’s confidence as a modern Western city.

Time and traffic did their work, though. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, the bridge eventually needed a full rebuild. Beginning in 2003, crews dismantled everything down to the arch ribs and reconstructed the superstructure—deck, spandrel arches, and columns so it would look and feel like the 1911 original while meeting contemporary standards. The “new” Monroe Street Bridge reopened in 2005, faithful in silhouette and ornament, sturdier under the hood. Today it stretches roughly 896 feet across the Spokane River gorge, 136 feet above the water, carrying cars, pedestrians, and a century of local stories.

Why does this bridge keep showing up in my fiction? Because it’s more than concrete and rebar; it’s a character. The drop of the gorge, the roar of the falls, the wind that can cut straight through a person are elements that shape the people who meet there.

On that span, secrets feel heavier and choices feel permanent. In The Value in Our Lies, Morgan confronts a judge he knows intimately on the bridge, a conversation that becomes a pivot for both men. In The Fate of Our Years, Dallas Nash and his partner work on a murder that occurred beneath those arches. The bridge adds gravity, noise, and a touch of danger—exactly the kind of stage I love for moments when a truth can’t be dodged.